


children of the damned

by guiltylights



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alabasta, Alabasta Arc, Canon Compliant, Gen, here is my attempt at how that might've gone down, it's CRIMINAL they never got to meet, listen these two have so many parallels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 16:41:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15755706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guiltylights/pseuds/guiltylights
Summary: A finger traces almost carelessly around the rim of the wine glass, but Ace watches from the corner of his eye how that finger never wavers from its steady trajectory, the line of the glass always pressed exactly in the middle of that finger, and knows this woman is anything but relaxed. Confident, perhaps, but not relaxed; the bow of her spine is stiff and unyielding, taut like a too-tight string under the loose soft layers of her fur coat, and Ace wonders briefly whether that’s why she wears it in this fucking sauna-like desert country – to hide the stiffness of her back, her smile –  before pushing the thought away to the recesses of his brain. It’s absolutely none of his goddamn business.Devil child,Ace remembers.





	children of the damned

**Author's Note:**

> [Time started: 12th Aug 18, 6:23pm;– ]
> 
> These ficlets are a thing. They are a thing.

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He feels her settle next to him more than he hears it, the sound of her white fur-trimmed coat making no sound even as it brushes along the dirty hardwood floor and drapes itself along the back rim of the barstool she delicately settles herself upon. An elegance and grace that’s out of place in the middle of the pub they are in, but yet she fits right in almost as if she belongs there. The people around them are boisterous, noisy, drunken only a group of people on a Friday night could be – especially in a country like Alabasta, where the temperature drops to below freezing by nightfall, people gravitate to places with warm food and warm company and warm alcohol. Despite the hearty atmosphere of the pub, however, the air around the two of them hangs strangely heavy and loaded.

Ace drains his tankard of ale, and shoves another cut of chicken down his throat, relaxed; if the woman next to him wants something she can damn well ask for it.

The bartender walks over with a glass of wine, and sets it down in front of the woman; she accepts it with a smile and small nod, curling long fingers around the stem. “New around town?” She asks, not looking in Ace’s direction as she takes a sip of her drink, staring straight ahead – but there is a smile playing on her lips. There’s a cowboy hat perched on top of her head. Ace shovels in another forkful of meat down his throat.

“Yeah,” he answers, after he’s chewed and swallowed. 

The woman tilts her head to the side, inspecting the glass in her hand as if checking for smudges.

“Are you here on any particular business, second division commander of the Whitebeard pirates?” 

The woman sitting next to him is beautiful, but beautiful women can be found everywhere. Ace has traveled to many places as a pirate, been on a million different islands and countries and cities and have found beautiful women in each, but it isn’t the beauty of the woman beside him that takes Ace’s attention; it’s something else. A kind of danger. The woman next to him is classy and wicked, sweet like marzipan and poisonous like cyanide all at once, and her almond-shaped eyes close in a slit-eyed smile when Ace chances a glance in her direction. Ace can respect that.

Ace grins around the rim of his ale, even as his spine stiffens and his attention expands to take in his surroundings, calculating the distance from his stool to the nearest exit, all the possible danger spots along the way.

“Not really. Here on a personal trip, you can call it. I’m not here to make trouble.” Ace answers honestly.

The woman beside him hums, once; a short, amused sound, mellifluous like deep water. It is almost lost in the din of the pub they are in. A finger traces almost carelessly around the rim of the wine glass, but Ace watches from the corner of his eye how that finger never wavers from its steady trajectory, the line of the glass always pressed exactly in the middle of that finger, and knows this woman is anything but relaxed. Confident, perhaps, but not relaxed; the bow of her spine is stiff and unyielding, taut like a too-tight string under the loose soft layers of her fur coat, and Ace wonders briefly whether that’s why she wears it in this fucking sauna-like desert country – to hide the stiffness of her back, her smile – before pushing the thought away to the recesses of his brain. It’s absolutely none of his goddamn business.

“Are you absolutely sure, Commander-san? It would be quite inconvenient to me if you’re lying, you know. I much prefer having quiet, uneventful evenings – it would be such a shame if we were to change that.”

“If I were truly lying, do you really think this would be the time I gave up the lie?” Ace counters, flicking his hat back on his head with a finger so it settles neatly away from his eyes. The woman cocks her head in response. “Make your own conclusions about me, it’s not my job to go out of the way to convince you. I’ve said what there is to be said.” Ace shrugs, and eyes the woman, smirking. “If it means anything, I’m not lying. So you can switch off that transmission device you have in your pocket, I’m not in this place to invade your turf.”

The woman raises an eyebrow in mild surprise. There’s a look on her face that suggests she’s impressed, even; her right hand that had previously been dug deep into her fur coat pocket shifts slightly before drawing out, and Ace briefly basks in the glory. But he doesn't let down his guard. This woman knows what it’s like to be both predator and prey, and Ace knows he’s not safe just yet.

After a short pause, the woman turns back to the counter, and picks up her wine glass. “I’ll have you know the other person at the end of that line is going to be furious that I’ve cut off the connection,” she murmurs, but she’s smiling, and Ace supposes that’s a good thing. This is the realest thing that’s come out of her so far.

“Not my problem.”

Ace lifts his hand, signals for the bartender to bring him another drink. The bartender, busy with a rowdy group all the way at the other end, sloppily fills up a mug and shoves it roughly across the length of the oak counter. The force of the shove tips the cup forward on an edge, the insides threatening to spill; Ace lurches forward, concerned – only to have a hand sprout from the smooth surface of the table wood to balance and re-tip the cup back to its original position, before pushing the cup lightly towards Ace’s direction. Ace gapes.

The woman only smiles enigmatically, the hand disappearing into a quiet swirl of petals unnoticed in the general noise and din.

Ace notices his mouth is still hanging slightly open, and recollects himself. Settling back into his seat, he takes a sip of his new cup of alcohol, sneaks glances at the woman next to him. She’s smiling into her wine, the curve of her mouth scimitar-sharp against her cheek.

Ace remembers his manners. “Thank you,” he says, and grins too, surprised and impressed and pleased, and after taking another sip of his ale, says, “so it’s true that you _are_ a devil fruit user.”

The bow of the woman’s back snaps tight like that of a cornered animal. Ace almost hates to see the façade of casualness around them disappear, but well, there’s no helping it. No sense in letting either of them get too comfortable. Ace forces himself to stay loose and relaxed, doesn’t react even as the woman twitches. It feels like an involuntary reaction, that twitch; like something that had slipped out without warning, without a meaning to, a betrayal of something deeper and darker and instinctive that the woman never wanted anyone else to see.

After a long beat of pause, the woman says, “so you’ve heard of me.”

Ace lifts one shoulder carelessly. “Kind of hard not to. Wasn’t sure, since the picture of you on your bounty poster is back when you were a kid, but then you used your powers, Nico Robin, and I kind of figured.”

There’s a lie in that. In truth, Ace had recognised her scarce seconds after she had settled next to him at the bar. It hadn’t been the face, or the hair, or the features that tipped him off – the Nico Robin now looks similar to what she looked like as a child, all shiny straight black hair and bangs and sharp, pointed chin, but so many women can look like that – but the eyes had been what gave her away. Nico Robin’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes, not back when she had been a child, and not now, with those smiles of hers that cut like a knife. That’s how Ace recognises her.

 _Devil child._ Ace remembers. Ace remembers reading about Nico Robin, remembers the details he’s pilfered from sneaking into Marine bases – quick snippets he’d stolen whilst digging up other information for his crew and his Pops. _Devil child– Shouldn’t have been born–_

Ace recognises those eyes, eyes like an animal that’s been wounded so many times that there’s no point in counting, because sometimes he sees those eyes on himself. It’s not that she’s strong. It’s not that she’s weak. It’s simply that she’s learned how to deal with hurt the best way she can in her circumstances, empty like an armour and howling like the wind. _Devil child._ Ace remembers dark-spotted childhood days prowling in bars, fists clenched in a hot sweaty too-tight grip as drunken older sailors jeered, _Roger’s kid? He’d be a demon who wouldn’t deserve to be born, or to live–_

 _Son of the devil,_ Ace remembers. _Devil child,_ Ace remembers.

Next to him, Nico Robin is still a tense, stiff figure, mouth a pressed flat slash of a line across her face. There is a smile playing across her lips, deliberately casual, but Ace can see the imperceptible trembling of her fingers against the thin stem of her wine glass as she takes a sip, controlled but there all the same. It is a sort of fear. But she’s not afraid of him.

Ace thinks that if he’d met this woman in some other circumstances, he might’ve enjoyed her company. Lord knows they have a lot of things in common.

Ace thinks that they’re done here. He drains his tankard of ale, slings his backpack onto his shoulders, pushes his seat back away from the counter.

As he passes by Nico Robin’s figure, he hears her murmur, “not doing anything?”

Ace glances back; the wary line of her shoulder has relaxed somewhat. He grins, tips his hat back. “Nah. Like I said: I’m only here on a personal trip.”

Nico Robin manages a hum. “I could be up to bad things, though, Commander-san.” There is a hint of mirth in her voice, a hint of bitterness. Ace doesn’t think too much about it.

“I couldn’t care less about what you might be up to. I’m not a Marine. So long as we don’t interfere with each other, what you do is of no matter to me.” He’s a pirate. There’s no romanticism of justice here, no idealistic dreams of morality. Nothing but his own agenda, his own goals to fight for and achieve. And his plans in this country involves only one of two children of the damned; by all accounts they have nothing to do with each other.

All the same. Ace looks at the tenseness knotted in the base of Nico Robin’s spine.

Tiny pinpricks of light dance around in front of Nico Robin’s startled vision, spiraling like fireflies around her person. Ace waits a few seconds, before quietly snapping his fingers and exploding them in small showers of spark-like fireworks, a cascade of light around her like rain.

There’s pause, and then Nico Robin starts chuckling. “You’re an unusual person, Commander-san.”

Ace smirks. “I could say the same about you.” He flicks experimentally at the nose that has suddenly sprouted on the side of his neck. It disappears in a flurry of petals.

“Perhaps so. But your warning has been duly noted, second division commander of the Whitebeard pirates.” The respect is thanks on its own.

“As have yours.” Ace is pleased she gets the message. Can’t have things between them too comfortable, after all.

Nico Robin laughs again, and it’s going to be the closest to honesty Ace will ever hear from her, he’s sure. “Take care, Commander-san.”

“You too.” Ace salutes.

With that, Ace sweeps out past Nico Robin, who’s smiling into her drink, and steps out of the pub into the cold desert air.

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**Author's Note:**

> Okay this is not a ficlet it’s like past the 2k mark but WHATEVER NEEDED TO WRITE IT. It’s criminal that Ace and Robin have never interacted in canon (as if we know) yet the parallels between them are golden. There are So Many Parallels. I didn’t even touch on the entire thing they both have going on about “yelling bad things at Luffy to keep him away and keep him safe”, so. 
> 
> In recent times I've been trying the thing where I don't get too perfectionist and nitpicky about my writing, so I won't end up getting tunnel vision and crippling myself. My One Piece fics are the results of that so far. 
> 
> I have a [tumblr](http://guilty-lights.tumblr.com/), so come drop by and say hi if you wanna! 
> 
> [Time ended: 22nd Aug 18, 12:36am;– ]


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